A native of New York City, Rice studied law and passed his bar exams. However, he immediately began writing, and On Trial (1914), which employed a flashback technique, made Rice an important playwright at age 22. He proceeded to study under Hatcher Hughes at Columbia University, where he also directed. He helped found the Playwrights' Company in 1938, the Dramatists Guild, and other groups. In 1951 he came to the defense of actors whose allegedly left-wing associations were causing them to lose their jobs. During his 45 years in the theater, Rice wrote 50 full-length plays, 4 novels, and several film and television scripts, as well as his autobiography and The Living Theater (1939), which appraises the theater in terms of the social and economic forces affecting its development. His two masterpieces are The Adding Machine (1923), an expressionistic comedy wherein the hero remains a cipher in mechanized society, and Street Scene (1929), which was originally entitled Landscape with Figures because Rice considered the [tenement] house as the real protagonist of the drama. The plot's crime passionel is but one aspect of the crowded panorama of tenement life. Robert Hogan writes in assessing Rice's career, Rice has produced a remarkable body of work—large, varied, experimental andhonest . . . . As a consistently experimental playwright he is rivalled in our theater only by O'Neill.Rice won the Pulitzer Prize for drama for Street Scene.

p Drama Characters: 9 male, 5 female (doubling possible). Unit set. Originally produced to acclaim by Washington D.C.'s famed Arena Stage, this is an engrossing political drama about the contemporary farm crisis in America and its effect on rural communities. A haunting and emotionally draining play. A community of farmers and ranchers in a small Colorado town disintegrates under the weight of failure and thwarted ambitions. Most of the farmers, their spouses, children, clergyman, banker and greasy spoon proprietress survive, but it is survival without triumph. This is an Our Town for the 80's. -The Washington Post

Comedy Characters: 15 male, 10 female, extras, plus 6 musicians. Various interior and exterior sets or unit set. This recent hit in London is a free adaptation of the 19th century farce by Johann Nestroy that provided the plot for Thornton Wilder's The Merchant of Yonkers, which led to The Matchmaker, which led to Hello, Dolly. The story is basically one long chase, chiefly after two naughty grocer's assistants who, when their master goes off on a binge with a new mistress, escape to Vienna on a spree. While preserving the beautiful intricacies of this construction, Stoppard has embellished Razzle with a dazzle of verbal wit an unremitting firework display of puns, crossword puzzle tricks and sly sexual innuendos. London Daily Telegraph . Apart from Jumpers and The Importance of Being Earnest there may be no script in English funnier than On the Razzle. London Observer.

Drama / Characters:1 male, 1 femaleScenery: InteriorA couple sit at opposite ends of a table reminiscing about their life together. Each has a point of view and they rarely address each other directly. They are young to begin with, then middle aged, then old, then one dies. The anecdotes they relate are both humorous and tragic. Their lives seem wasted, yet the wife's muted final gesture of affection conveys a love that endured through years of bickering. A critical success in London, Ireland and the author's native South Africa. A minute tapestry cross stitched with rich detail– invested with a strong strain of uncomfortable truths.– Irish Times.

Mystery comedy11 f. 1 setAt a New York girl's boarding house, there is a newspaper woman who wants to write a novel, a wise cracking shop girl, the serious music student, a faded actress, a girl looking for romance, the kid who wants to crash Broadway and other boarders. The landlady, is the proud custodian of the McCarthy Collection, a group of perfect uncut diamonds. When it disappears from the safe, the newspaper woman is given two hours to solve the case before the police are called. Suspicion is cleverly shifted from one to the other of the girls and there's a very surprising solution.